Trends in the Race and Ethnicity of Eminent Americans

During the last several decades, the ethnic and racial composition of the American elite has changed to include some ethnic minorities and women. This study examines changes in the composition of one segment of the American elite: those who have obtained eminence in their occupations. Lieberson and Carter's study of the ethnic composition of eminent Americans, using Who's Who in America, is replicated with data from the 1990s (Lieberson and Carter, 1979, American Sociological Review 44:347–366). In addition, comparisons between blacks listed in Who's Who in America and blacks listed only in Who's Who among Black Americans are made. During the 20 years since Lieberson and Carter's study, Jews have made remarkable gains in eminent membership, while the rate of black representation has increased only moderately. Women are a small percentage of the eminent regardless of ethnicity, although black women are better represented than their counterparts in white ethnic groups.     

Ethnic preferences and perceptions among Asian and White British middle school children

Asian and White middle school children were shown photographs of unknown Afro-Caribbean, Asian, and White individuals of approximately the same age as themselves, and asked which one wax most like them, which one they would prefer to be, which ones they would prefer to engage in various activities with, and finally, to allocate positive and negative traits to the three groups or to nobody. A similar majority of both Asian and While children selected an own-race photograph as being most like them, but only about a half selected the own-race photograph as the one they would most like to he. For sharing activities, children showed a strong own-tender preference, followed by an own-race preference. White children stated a greater preference for sharing activities with White children, then with Afro-Caribbean children, and least with Asian children. Asian children preferred Asian and White children the most, Afro-Caribbean the least. On a stereotypes test, similar trends were obtained; White children evaluated While children highest and Asian lowest; Asian children tended to evaluate Asian children highest but to a nonsignificant extent. The relative proportion of Asian/White children in school appeared to have little systematic influence on the results, thus arguing against the contact hypothesis of prejudice reduction in its simple form.     

谈英语语言中的性别歧视和种族歧视

语言是社会和文化的重要组成部分。种族歧视和性别歧视作为一种社会现象必然会影响到作为社会交际工具的语言,种族歧视和性别歧视必然会在语言中反映出来。本文对英语中的种族歧视和性别歧视的种种现象进行了探讨,并指出了产生歧视的原因。     

Race and Population Change: A Longitudinal Look at Cleveland Neighborhoods

This paper investigates the relationship of racial composition to neighborhood population change from 1910 to 1990 in the Cleveland metropolitan area. To better understand the long-term dynamics of urban neighborhood change, we focus our analysis upon the longitudinal relationship of race, socioeconomic status, and life cycle stage to changes in neighborhood population densities. First, we find that the more established neighborhoods of the African-American community have experienced dramatic declines in population since 1950, a pattern that represents a clear change from the earlier part of the twentieth century. Second, population loss is experienced through a variety of mechanisms, including the demolition of dwellings, the increase in housing vacancy, and the decline of household size. Third, much of this population loss should be interpreted within the context of high economic distress, occurring most frequently in older African-American communities. Over time, economic distress appears to be more important than race in and of itself in leading to the loss of neighborhood populations.     

Partner Choice and the Differential Retreat From Marriage

The contemporary retreat from marriage in the United States has had a differential impact across socioeconomic and racial groups. Here, 1990 marriage rates and propensities for Virginia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin are analyzed regarding (a) the likelihood that persons in different groups ever marry and (b) patterns of partner choice with respect to race and educational level. Marriage remains strong in most race‐education groups but is substantially lower among Blacks and among those with less than 12 years of education. Patterns of partner choice have shifted to show greater symmetry between the educational levels of brides and grooms. Changes have been modest with regard to the level and pattern of interracial (Black‐White) marriage. Marriage is increasingly a union of equals, but a union chosen more by Whites than by Blacks and more by the well educated than by the poorly educated.     

Origins and destinies: Immigration to the United States since World War II

Contemporary immigration to the United States and the formation of new ethnic groups are the complex and unintended social consequences of the expansion of the nation to its post-World War II position of global hegemony. Immigrant communities in the United States today are related to a history of American military, political, economic, and cultural involvement and intervention in the sending countries, especially in Asia and the Caribbean Basin, and to the linkages that are formed in the process that open a variety of legal and illegal migration pathways. The 19.8 million foreign-born persons counted in the 1990 U.S. census formed the largest immigrant population in the world, though in relative terms, only 7.9% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, a lower proportion than earlier in this century. Today's immigrants are extraordinarily diverse, a reflection of polar-opposite types of migrations embedded in very different historical and structural contexts. Also, unlike the expanding economy that absorbed earlier flows from Europe, since the 1970s new immigrants have entered an hourglass economy with reduced opportunities for social mobility, particularly among the less educated, and new waves of refugees have entered a welfare state with expanded opportunities for public assistance. This paper seeks to make sense of the new diversity. A typology of contemporary immigrants is presented, and their patterns of settlement, their distinctive social and economic characteristics compared to major native-born racial-ethnic groups, and their different modes of incorporation in—and consequences for—American society are considered.     

Racial classification in criminology: The reproduction of racialized crime

The (re)production of knowledge about crime is cultural in terms of the questions asked, the comparisons made, and the hypotheses selected to explain crime causation. Since criminologists do not operate in a vacuum, any prejudgments, biases, and beliefs acquired before their professional socialization may well persist and affect their approach to research over the course of their academic careers. Because American criminologists live in a society that racializes a number of problem behaviors, including crime, it is conceivable that widely held beliefs about race that predate graduate training will find their way into assumptions about the relationship between race and crime. Such preprofessional beliefs are transformed into facts when they meet with widespread agreement from other criminologists and thus come to be taken for granted in the objective pursuit of knowledge. Crime is racialized, for example, when the criminal behaviors of individual black offenders are understood in terms of racial traits, racial motives, or racial experiences. When traits, motives, or experiences are classified as the property of whole races or racial communities, these conceptions of race assume causal significance in explaining criminal behavior. Because these traits, motives, and experiences are supposedly shared by entire races or race-class categories, the predisposition to criminality becomes generalized beyond individual Black criminals to whole races or racial communities of noncriminal Blacks. When crime is thus racialized, whole communities or whole categories of phenotypically similar individuals are rendered precriminal and morally suspect. In addition, such racializations in academic criminology can be used to justify increased control of individual black criminals in the larger society; these controls can also legitimately be extended to encompass whole communities and whole categories of phenotypically similar persons who are not involved in crime. This paper will address the role that racializing assumptions play in traditional criminological theories.     

HPV vaccine acceptance among a sample of Southern men who have sex with men: A comparison of younger and older men

Objectives: Do short, online educational messages about the human papillomavirus (HPV) influence younger and older men who have sex with men (MSM) differently? Second, what are the HPV knowledge levels and risk perceptions of Southern MSM living outside of major metropolitan areas? Methods: This study draws on participants who completed an anonymous online survey asking about their knowledge, risk assessment, and vaccine acceptance regarding HPV. Results: Knowledge about HPV was low among the MSM in this study. After reading a one-page information intervention, vaccine acceptability increased by a statistically significant amount among both a Younger and Older cohort but risk perception only increased among the younger respondents. Single men regardless of age cohort reported sharper increases in perceived risk after the intervention, but relationship status did not produce significant differences in vaccine acceptability. Conclusion: Online, brief interventions may be effective means of increasing motivation to vaccinate among Southern MSM.     

Unraveling Health Disparities Among Sexual and Gender Minorities: A Commentary on the Persistent Impact of Stigma

ABSTRACT

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) populations experience disparities in health outcomes, both physical and mental, compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers. This commentary confronts the view held by some researchers that the disparate rates of mental health problems reported among LGBT populations are the consequences of pursuing a particular life trajectory, rather than resulting from the corrosive and persistent impact of stigma. Suggesting that mental health disparities among LGBT populations arise internally, de novo, when individuals express non-heterosexual and non-conforming gender identities ignores the vast body of evidence documenting the destructive impact of socially mediated stigma and systemic discrimination on health outcomes for a number of minorities, including sexual and gender minorities. Furthermore, such thinking is antithetical to widely accepted standards of health and wellbeing because it implies that LGBT persons should adopt and live out identities that contradict or deny their innermost feelings of self.     

School context and American Indian substance use

The present study extends prior research exploring the role of school contextual factors in predicting individual adolescent substance use by examining how a school’s racial composition is associated with American Indian adolescent tobacco and marijuana use. Using a subsample of 523 American Indian students from the restricted use Add Health data, we consider both individual and school contextual factors across 99 schools. Our results suggest that a school’s racial composition is associated with individual tobacco and marijuana use among American Indian youth, but in different ways depending upon the substance. Our findings illustrate the importance of extending research on the correlates of substance use for racial and ethnic minorities beyond studies examining African-Americans and/or Hispanics.